paper -
68 Payroll Made Easy: A User-Friendly Web Interface for Student Payroll
William
Thieke, LeMoyne College
Administration of a student payroll in technology
services, or any
other area is a tedious task at best, but nonetheless
necessary. It must be
done, it must be accurate, and it must be on
time(especially in the eyes of
the students)!
LeMoyne College has developed a payroll system for
student staff using a
custom developed web interface and Filemaker Pro
4.0. Students log in via a
browser, using an ID card reader. The ID number is
verified against an
employee database and hours are logged based on the
time and date when the
record was created on the server. Logging out follows similar procedures.
The system is also capable of querying the payroll
database to see records
of hours worked during self-defined time periods.
This method has several advantages over the
traditional “pen and paper”
methods used by many institutions: 1)It provides an
accurate accounting of
student hours.
Login and out times are not based on the times that they
swiped their id card, not when the students said they
got there; 2)
Processing payroll a snap… about 5 minutes from start
to finish. Pay period
hours are exported to a “report database” with a
layout mimicking the
College’s payroll form. Payroll totals are automatically calculated and
account information on the students pulled in directly
from an employee
database; 3) It enables us to verify that students are
actually at work
where they say they are. The login/ logout sequence
captures the IP address
of the local machine, enabling verification of login
location.
This paper is intended for all those who are tired of
spending hours
processing payroll…time that could be better spent
doing more productive
tasks. It will
demonstrate the functionality of the web interface and
explore the FileMaker Pro database and CDML (Claris
Data Markup Language)
behind the web interface.